I upgraded to V2 using the linux method.
On my 400x SDHC card which is plugged into a usb adapter, the
xz --decompress --stdout blue_pup_v2_8gb.img.xz > /dev/sdX (sdg in my
case) + sync took 10 minutes to finish, could take a lot longer on a slower
card I guess.

Chrome/google is good - have used it daily now for several years on Puppy and Win.

If the need is for an efficient entry to the work environment, then the "metro" style is yet to prove it is better than other "menu" approaches.

On this thread, one metro screen has 40 "minipanels" in what seems a quite random arrangement.
A few test runs (usability trials) indicate that this is anything but efficient.

And if you multiply the visual choices by "switching screens"
then the math, and any knowledge of ergonomics, tells you that error rates are going to mushroom.

That's the cost, can anyone explain the benefits?

The choices for getting opening and new page styles within chrome and puppy (and utilising both) are numerous - I've tried a few including the newmetrotab linked.
We also need to remember the user's harware/function-key option which should be integrated with the screen interface (often available even on some tablet/mobile systems, to some degree).

But to get the real work done, most people find the minimalist approach works best?

1. If there's a hardware key, use it, eg main menu - browser -mail -search (no more than four):
2. Have screen menu for others: (no more than 8 choices on main auto-opener)
3. make use of sub menus within the apps - e.g browser favourites suitably arranged in categories/classes.

To do this efficiently, apply the principles of classification (google it).

More than about half a doz choices (on hardware or screen) just slows the real work down (by slowing down the entry to the real workspace/app) ?

And getting real things done, whether for work or pleasure, has to be a pretty important reason for looking at a screen, doesn't it?

Given that your USB 1TB? disc is external and probably 5300rpm, you would be better off just installing to a USB3 stick which would give equivalent or better performance.
IMHO a dedicated backup disc is too important to experiment with and ever changing USB drive letters a potential problem. It would also obviate the need to change your
existing grub setup.

@ jabu2

Thanks for reviewing this take on Puppy. The “why” was covered in my post dated 04/03/14. You obviously favour an efficient minimalist desktop and that to some extent was covered with the new desktop panel and toggle ability introduced in version 2.
I would also refer you to the global key combinations detailed in the original post.

O.O.T.B. the number of Metro tiles can be a bit overwhelming but the quantity of tiles together with the purpose they each serve is entirely user configurable. It comes into its own once you have done that, zoom in and then pan left & right with the mouse scroll wheel. At the end of the day the tiles are nothing more than posh bookmarks.
(Love them or hate them) _________________Regards ETP
Pups inmy kennels.

This has no bearing on anything written by anyone in this thread. Its a view for consideration.

ETP presents something for this community that no one else has stepped forward to address in any apparent manner.

To step back for a moment, we all need to consider what has been happening for the past decade started probably in a big way by the old Palm device. This progressed into Nokia, iDevices (Apple), Blackberry, Android, and Windows. Along the way, came Chrome OS and now browsers looking to get into users hands in a very consistent way as time progresses and user experience coalesce around touching something to activate it.

ETP is helping by presenting those who for one reason or another are used to "touching" something to activate/initiate a desired function.

We can help by testing and offering ideas that would help as touch continues to provide users an acceptable way of interacting with an intelligent system to make some needed information present or some activity present for use.

None of us are going to be able to stop the, now, 3.5 billion touch oriented devices in use in the world each day, not to mention the many of us who have been users of cell touch devices in an ever increasing way. The industry has gotten this movement to make easy for both vendors, product builders, and users to function. Some of my friends who said they would NEVER buy/use those new technology phones/tablets few years ago, now have them as they joyously demonstrate how they use it for something they find practical. Soon there will be over 7billion smartDevices before the end of 2015 which we touch, on the way to over 20billion before the end of the decade.

Thus, if BLUE lives up to what is offered, it would service, equally, users who prefer non-touch and also those who use touch...again, equally at home for each type of user's PC.

Let's not try to derail Puppy expansion or any developer trying to improve our ability with what they provide.

This distro is a rather forward step, yet, may not be viewed as such by everyone.

We already know how to type and click stuff. The display with buttons to click or touch is now mainstream. We can embrace it or we can ignore, but, it is, now, mainstream. With a remote potential for gesture gaining traction in user experience to make a system's function active._________________Get ACTIVE Create Circles; Do those good things which benefit people's needs!
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I found another 8GB stick and tried it also, but no luck in booting. Continue kernel panics on each stick from 2 different manufacturers.

Use a 32GB stick which I had available ... SUCCESS with BLUE boot!

Downloaded and tried BarryK's Tahr on 8GB USBs...Success with both sticks

Any information you seek to provide assistance, just ask.

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The puzzle here was that both in this thread and the QT thread, some people have had persistent success and others failure.
The clues I now believe, lay in gcmartin’s success with a 32GB stick and Gparted screen-shot of an apparently successful 8GB build that failed to boot giving a kernel panic. When I first looked at that shot I observed, but foolishly ignored, that the size of the last unallocated partition was slightly less than that on my 8GB stick.
It is therefore not an exact copy. The “disc” had not been duplicated.

The point here is that all sticks are not equal in their actual capacity. An 8GB stick from one manufacturer may be a few hundred KB less than one from another or even a different model from the same manufacturer. If your 8GB stick's actual capacity is equal to or greater than that of the stick that was imaged there is no problem. If it is less, you get apparent success but actual failure.

The solution is to use at least the next size up from the image size if you experience failure or start with a 16GB stick if presented with an 8GB image.

If you do encounter this problem it would apply regardless of the method used to place the image on your stick. (xz, dd or win32diskimager)

Edit.
A forum member has alerted me to the fact that with the 8GB QT image he had success with an 8GB stick but failures with two different 16GB sticks. There is therefore more to this issue than meets the eye and other possible causes yet to be explained. How the cloning tool perceives the target stick may be an issue if it has had various partition types on it in the past.
Given that scenario it would probably be good practice to prepare the target stick using Gparted to get it back to its original “out of the packet” state. To do that:
1. Using Gparted create a new partition table.
2. Create a single fat32 partition spanning the whole of the stick._________________Regards ETP
Pups inmy kennels.

I have taken a virgin USB stick size 8Gbytes, and have done a clean format FAT32 (default sector size).
The 8 Gbyte image does not fit on it. I am few hundred sectors short.

I am not sure how this is done legally ... When I buy a 8Gbyte USB stick, what is the minimum amount of storage I am entitled to (7.51 Gbyte ? 7.99 Gbyte ? 7.9999999 Gbyte ? 8.01 ?)

High density USB drives (flash memory devices) do have limitted life time. That is why "wear leveling" is used in the OS. This is why the image for this version of puppy enfolds to 8Gbyte, and not few hundred megabyte. The OS will re-allocate write area's dynamically and avoid bad blocks.
But what if the virgin stick from the manufacturer already had bad blocks.
Then, the stick will show smaller size. To the OS it will still look as one single block (logical blocks may be translated under water different to physical blocks) but the total size will be lower.

To prevent these mismatches, would it be wise to package the image in the future as size 7 Gbyte, for an 8 Gbyte stick ? Just to avoide issues like this ? That may even allow for a second partition, with a standard puppy in the last few 100 Mbyte.

Of coarse, the next size bigger stick will also work (16Gbyte)... technically.

P.S. if I use a USB2 stick, do I get any reasonable performance out of this ? Or is it dead slow compared to the "decompress and run all in RAM" method that standard puppies use ? In other words, can you do a Blue PrePup (Precise Puppy) or Blue RarPup (Raring) since these still use the original frugal installs?

A genuine non-fake, empty, in spec stick sold as 8GB (8,000,000,000 bytes) actually equates to a usable 7.45 GB and hopefully would have no bad blocks reducing it below that figure.
The world is however, awash with totally fake sticks and manufacturer’s rejects marked as 8GB but whose true capacity would probably be in the region of 2.0-7.0 GB.

With heavy use an ideal stick’s capacity may reduce if cells fail. As far as I know there is no over-provisioning in sticks as there is with SSDs.

If an image of a particular stick is made it will be an exact copy of that stick including the data, partition table and MFT. It then does not really matter if that image is compressed by 50% or 90% as once you have decompressed it to place the image on another stick, it will attempt to return to its original size. In the absence of any 7GB sticks the next size up (16GB) seems to be the only solution at present.

All of this paints a confusing picture with lots of potential for failure. It is very frustrating and little wonder that BK has made mention of an ISO albeit in connection with zram.

With regard to your USB2 question, this Pup boots quicker and live running seems just as quick. It really flies when installed to USB3 or better still HD/SSD._________________Regards ETP
Pups inmy kennels.

@ETP, this the a departure from your mission of PUP distro evaluation and testing because it narrows into the problem of trying to merely use a USB vs covering the distro's offering in service to community users.

I would not like to derail in trying to address the problem of what to do with the image so that this system (in fact any system using the QUIRKY-TAHR6+ approach) can be loaded for booting.

But, since we are here (and hoping that some developers who would follow this path of delivery) I will share one view starting with a question: Using an image of a system which has been compressed using a particular compression technique, what should a developer publish so that there is a reasonable guarantee that his distro will boot 99-100% of the time?

Not speaking for @BarryK, when he presented this departure of system delivery from traditional ISO I envision that he finds that system performance from the usual RAM based DVD and frugal methods not all that superior to a "full" installation, If indeed that is the case (I for one have not measured this), then this is an easy discrete manner to move the community to an equivalent performing distro, yet have it be portable too via USB.

If on the other hand, if he was looking at, say, my asking over the years to take a newly personalized configured running system and run some utility that turns that running system into an exact image which can be booted in the future from this image, then this could be viewed as both a step for developers and users alike.

Then again he may be looking at the potential rise in use of Blu-ray and USBs and considering a solution which could map a running system to those portable devices as well as being perfectly at home on a permanent hard-drive as well.

Dunno! ??? !!!

I can say as I have found, this new delivery and its setup will work. It is different. It has not been fully explained what it is hoped for by going to this new delivery model. But, I can see compression for a deliverable and an attempt to simplify versus having to learn "hybrid" which @JamesBond and @Kirk have been mastering in FATDOG6+.

Further, it should have @BarryK, yourself, and every other developer to articulate/publish the "base system requirements" to have a reasonable (99%) expectation of getting a system to boot and perform as they foresee. More and more Puppy developers in the recent years are stepping up to the plate on providing this kind of information at their distro's announcement. But, there sometimes is oversight and this Quirky approach is one on them which needs a better reflection of safe requirements to boot.

Summary
In this case, without addresses the shortfall problem, of 8GB USB, publishing that the recommendation is 16GB stick while showing what will be seen upon completion of USB stage, will assist and get the user to a more reasonable successful booting on these Quirkys which incorporate BarryK current view of migrating the community to a "full" installation on a portable (or permanent) USB device versus to an ISO or to an existing HDD partition, which would be just as practical in achievement for booting.

For example, until this new approach is further perfected/matured, let justtell users that they need a 16GB or larger USB drive and that the process will destroy all existing information that exist on the USB in producing a BLUE/Quirky6+ system.
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i've finally got a bootable system on a usb stick after a few more failures.

I used a 16 Gb stick and after a failure with it, I looked at the formatting in detail with gparted. I found it had a few K bits unformated at the front and use gparted to move the formated section to fill the space on the stick.

After this it worked. I use a netbook and the windows are too big for it, but had no trouble getting on to the internet. Found the metro screen a bit strange especially as it was too big for the computer but at least it's a start.

... I used a 16 Gb stick and after a failure with it, I looked at the formatting in detail with gparted. I found it had a few K bits unformated at the front and use gparted to move the formated section to fill the space on the stick.

After this it worked. ...

@ETP and other QUIRKY6+ distro developers: Is there a possibility that some version of the "dd" command needs to be run prior to execution of the "xz" command to prepare the USB stick for the needs of the xz expansion?

GParted has a habit of the default of MB vs Cyl mode of operation as well as leaving an untouchable header area in front of the primary partition it creates. Could this area be also responsible for wrongful preparation of USB for this technology that @BarryK introduces?

Wondering ..._________________Get ACTIVE Create Circles; Do those good things which benefit people's needs!
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To step back for a moment, we all need to consider what has been happening for the past decade started probably in a big way by the old Palm device. This progressed into Nokia, iDevices (Apple), Blackberry, Android, and Windows. Along the way, came Chrome OS and now browsers looking to get into users hands in a very consistent way as time progresses and user experience coalesce around touching something to activate it.

ETP is helping by presenting those who for one reason or another are used to "touching" something to activate/initiate a desired function.

We can help by testing and offering ideas that would help as touch continues to provide users an acceptable way of interacting with an intelligent system to make some needed information present or some activity present for use.

None of us are going to be able to stop the, now, 3.5 billion touch oriented devices in use in the world each day, not to mention the many of us who have been users of cell touch devices in an ever increasing way. The industry has gotten this movement to make easy for both vendors, product builders, and users to function. Some of my friends who said they would NEVER buy/use those new technology phones/tablets few years ago, now have them as they joyously demonstrate how they use it for something they find practical. Soon there will be over 7billion smartDevices before the end of 2015 which we touch, on the way to over 20billion before the end of the decade.

Thus, if BLUE lives up to what is offered, it would service, equally, users who prefer non-touch and also those who use touch...again, equally at home for each type of user's PC.

This video took around 10 minutes to make and another 10 minutes to upload to youtube. No sound (no editing either so all real-time) as it was all done using just a mouse http://youtu.be/au065NWZJDA (best viewed at 720 resolution full screened). With something like VNC server running under Slacko and a tablet running vnc client typing text could have been (a lot) quicker).

Simple options of :

Sitting at the PC with keyboard and monitor (standard desktop)
Sitting in the couch with the TV as the monitor and controlled by a wireless mouse.
Sitting in the couch with a tablet and vnc connection to PC
Out and about using a tablet with vnc connection to PC

EDIT: Just noticed the uploaded youtube/video doesn't show the sneekylinux's video when I visited that webpage during the recording, it did however display OK at the time. Guess that xvidcap struggled to keep up (it was compressing on the fly - asking just too much of my minimal (dated) system).Last edited by rufwoof on Thu 20 Mar 2014, 19:19; edited 1 time in total

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